‘F’ Too Old
The only thing aging poorly is that story you keep telling yourself.
We all know that buddy cop movie trope. The one where the grizzled veteran detective, counting down the days to his retirement, all of a sudden finds himself in the center of an adrenaline-charged showdown with the bad guys (usually because his new hotshot partner with the great hair just HAD to go poking his nose into things).
Taking cover behind a bullet-riddled unmarked sedan, he wipes the blood and sweat from his brow and laments: ‘I’m getting too old for this shit.’
In my less cinematic life, I’ve uttered a variation of that phrase more times than I’d care to recall.
Get in great shape? I’m too old for that shit.
Make friends with new, interesting people? Too old!
Start a new career? Old!
Get married again? I’m too ol…wait, what?
Yet, this ‘old dude’ did all of those things.
Telling ourselves that we are too old to <fill in the blank> is just a story that we like to lean against so we don’t have to take action. It’s a safe, soothing fallback position, like forever looking at your phone when you’re in an uncomfortable social setting.
You don’t stop running because you get old. You get old because you stop running.
–Jack Kirk, competitive super-runner until age 96
Sadly, it’s a story that potentially great people repeat to ensure that they remain average.
And remain stuck exactly where they are.
As some men reach a certain age, the act of doing something — especially something considered ‘hard work’ — is as hard to comprehend as that douchebag from PR taking a Zoom call from his convertible.
However, this has nothing to do with age. This has everything to do with inertia. Inertia is so powerful that Newton wrote a law about it. Not just some tacked on, page-filler law.
The First Law! Of Motion!
Newton’s first law of motion states that ‘an object at rest stays at rest and an object in motion stays in motion with the same speed and in the same direction unless acted upon by an unbalanced force’.
–Sir Isaac Fucking Newton
To the sedentary male over the age 40, inertia has settled into his bones and it’s using the full weight of its law to make sure he stays at rest.
You’re not over the hill, my friend.
You can’t even make it to the hill, much less get over it.
In order to get your life moving in the direction toward higher achievement, you need to find that force that’s going to propel you forward.
Age is not a factor. As long as you are still able to move, you have the ability to achieve great things, regardless of what the actuarial tables say.
Don’t believe me? Here are some examples, my skeptical reader.
- Charles Darwin was 50 when On the Origin of the Species was finally published.
- “Colonel” Harland Sanders was in his 60’s when he franchised his first fried chicken restaurant.
- Sam Walton was a 44-year old ‘failure’ before he opened his first Wal-Mart and eventually became one of the richest men in the world.
- Ray Kroc was 52 when he ̶e̶x̶p̶l̶o̶i̶t̶e̶d̶ met the McDonald brothers and found a way to franchise their restaurant across the United States.
- Abraham Lincoln seemingly gave up on his political aspirations at the age of 40, left the House of Representatives and returned to practicing law. He joined the newly created Republican Party seven years later and was elected President of the United States four years after that.
- Peter Mark Roget didn’t publish his famous thesaurus until he was 73! (Ya know, there’s got to be a better word than ‘famous.’ If only I knew where to find it.)
You think these are outliers? That achieving success is a young man’s game? Why do you think everything I say is a lie? I don’t deserve this treatment!
Feast your doubting eyes on these facts…
Most entrepreneurs worldwide are 55–64: According to the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor, the highest rate of entrepreneurship worldwide has shifted to the 55–64 age group. And, entrepreneurial activity among the over 50s has increased by more than 50% since 2008.
Massive success is more likely after 50: Sure, the wünderkinds like Zuckerberg, Musk and Gates (who was 23 when he started Microsoft) get all the press, but it turns out they are the actual outliers. Success is far more likely later in life.
A study that analyzed 2.7 million people who started companies between 2007 and 2014 found that a 50-year-old is twice as likely to have a massive success — defined as a company that performs in the top 0.1 percent — than a 30-year-old.
Success seems to grow as you age:
- A 60-year-old startup founder is 3 times as likely as a 30-year-old founder to launch a successful startup
- A 50-year-old startup founder is 2.2 times more likely to found a successful startup as a 30-year-old.
- A 40-year-old startup founder is 2.1 times more likely to found a successful startup as a 25-year-old.
- A 50-year-old startup founder is 2.8 times more likely to found a successful startup as a 25-year-old founder.
Men are anxious to improve their circumstances, but are unwilling to improve themselves; they therefore remain bound.
– James Allen ‘As A Man Thinketh’
The difference between a late-in-life success story and a cautionary tale boils down to the amount of consistent action toward a worthy purpose that you are willing to take without giving up.
That’s the secret formula.
Too often, we talk about all the things we want to do until we either talk ourselves out of doing it or we decide we talked for too long and didn’t leave enough time to actually do it.
We also have a tendency to wait until we have formulated the perfect plan or pinpointed the perfect time.
Both, as we know, are illusions.
Sustained, purposeful action trumps waiting on the perfect plan. Every. Time.
Remember, we are ruled by the first law of motion.
Reason your way into a catatonic, living death or act your way into a vibrant, bountiful life.
When I take action, I immediately stop hearing all the internal voices that try to shame me from moving forward. I stop thinking that it’s too late or I’ll look stupid or I’m too old.
Writing, for me, is a time portal. When I write, I don’t feel old. I feel ageless. It’s as if I step out of the linear realm.
I step out of myself.
It reminds me of when I was a kid playing outside with my friends or as a first-time dad playing on the kitchen floor with my sons. Or, decades later, on my first date with my future wife.
I feel so ‘in the moment’ that all the self-inflicted limitations that keep me earthbound and constrained just fade away.
What activity in your life has unlocked the door to this realm? Where hours felt like minutes? Where you weren’t judging or limiting or trying to control your experience?
Where you let go of all of it and felt… eternal?
Those are the moments that I want for you. And I know, firsthand, that they are available to you regardless what age– and in whatever circumstances– you find yourself as you read this sentence.
Please believe that.
If you are still here and can tamp down those inner voices of doubt from drowning me out just a tad longer, let me amplify this reprise.
Act.
Don’t wait for some divine intervention. Don’t believe anybody who tells you that you can’t do something, especially you. And, most of all, don’t make your age a scapegoat for your unmet aspirations.
Act.
You are the envy of all that are dead. They would do anything to change places with you, but they can’t.
Honor the privilege of being alive by being your most alive.
Act.
Sorry, but you can’t hand in your badge and move into that retirement community just yet. While you’re at it, you might as well throw that brochure in the wastebasket next to your desk, because you’re not going anywhere.
There’s still a lot more work that needs to be done. You think Mr. Wise-Cracking, Destined for Rehab Rookie With the Flowing Locks is going to know how shit really gets handled in the real world?
No, that’s veteran territory.
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